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Rose’s Story: My Entire Sexual Experience

When I was molested and taken advantage of for the first time, I was 13. He was my younger brother. We were playing a game on the PS2. I was messing with him and I kept pressing a certain button. It eventually frustrated him. He stopped fighting me and turned to face me. He was on the floor and I was on the couch. He moved between my legs. I stared at him in confusion as he placed his hands on my thighs.

I was in pink shorts, athletic shorts that I wore for sleep. I shifted away from him, clearly not comfortable. “Are you nervous?” It was a game, aparently. He told me when to stop. I told him to stop. He didn’t. He removed my pants and I remember just shutting down. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t do anything. My throat was closed.

He licked me. He stuck his fingers in me. It hurt. He moved me closer to the edge of the sofa. I didn’t stop him. He tried to pull his penis out. My sister came out of her room right near us, and it startled him so much he fell over. My body sprung back into action, even though my mind didn’t follow. I yanked my pants up and ran for the door.

That night, I sat in my bed and sobbed. My parents didn’t ask what happened to make me so upset. My brother gave me lecherous stares for the rest of the week. Eventually, I cracked after talking to a friend about it. I told my parents about a month and a half after it happened.

I distinctly remember that when I sat my mother down to tell her “Matthew (not my brother’s real name) tried to rape me”, she laughed in my face. She actually laughed. She said “Matthew would never try to rape you!” I had never felt such crushing devastation in my entire life. If it had been a coach or a teacher, my parents would have leapt to defend me.

But because it was my brother, they laughed at me and believed him that it was totally consensual. I think they still do to this day. It aches, it really does.

What aches more is that a few weeks ago, I was raped. I met up with a dude that I’d met online. We went to the beach. What started to scare me is that he got really touchy. I didn’t want him to touch me. I tried to play it off, laughing and saying “no, please don’t do that,” and pushing him away from me a bit. He didn’t listen. He was 35. I am 18.

As stupid and naive as only an 18 year old can be, I decided to meet with him. He told me that he got a hotel room. He led me there. I didn’t stop him. I could have told him I wanted to go home. I texted my friend “I’m getting really sketched out but I don’t want to be a bitch.” I could have said that I didn’t want to go to the hotel room. I could have done so many different things, but I didn’t.

He took advantage of me. I tried to stop him, but I had shut down enough that by the time my mind caught up with my body, he was already inside me, without a condom. He finished, and after he rolled off me, I turned to face the curtains, away from him. Again, I could have done a number of things, but I didn’t. I laid there for an hour as he talked about random things. I stared at those curtains like they were the most interesting thing in the world.
He grabbed my hand and forced me to make him hard. He made me deepthroat him. I had never felt more disgusted in my life. Again, I could have bitten him, I could have done so many things but I didn’t.

He started again, but this time he tried to put it in my butt. I screamed at him to stop, but he didn’t.

I gave up after a while, trying to fight him, and just sat there and let him do what he wanted. He put it back in my vagina to finish. After that, I told him I needed the restroom. I got my phone, texted my friend to call me and pretend to be my grandma. He did and I told the guy that I needed to go home right away.

He drove me back to my grandma’s place and he demanded I give him a kiss. He shoved his tonge down my throat before I got out and walked up the stairs to my grandma’s apartment. The first and only thing I could think of doing was showering. I took a shower, trying to clean the stuff out of me, trying to keep my crying to a minimum so my grandma wouldn’t suspect anything.

I called my friend from earlier and talked to him for hours that night. I went to sleep without crying. The next night, I couldn’t keep it hidden anymore. I told my parents. They believed me, until they started getting the story from me. My aunt and uncle got involved. Soon, I had four very angry adults staring down at me, believing I’d made up the rape allegation for some drama. They told me it wasn’t rape because it wasn’t prosecutable. They told me “I told you so” and “It’s your fault” and “You’re such a drama queen” and “If you hadn’t done this then (blank) wouldn’t have happened!”

I felt and still feel like that 13 year old. I’m seeing a therapist now, for many reasons other than this incident, and I’m due for an STD screening by the end of the week. I’m terrified that I’ll have HIV or hep B or something similar. And my parents are making me pay for it because it’s my fault. They made me pay for my Plan B, which put me out $50. They are making me pay for my gas, my insurance on the car, they took my electronics away for almost a week and a half, and it’s all punishment for me being raped.

I still don’t feel like I was raped. I know it was; all my friends and everything I’ve read on the internet tells me it was rape, but I don’t feel like it is. It’s not the stereotypical rape that’s talked about on TV or crime shows. So was it still rape?